


disparity

by mm01



Series: // [2]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Gen, kevins belongings are stolen and abused in his absence, nicky RUMINATES, nicky pov, nothing really happens again, the aforementioned haircut comes to fruition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-31 01:09:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13964094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mm01/pseuds/mm01
Summary: “Sure, Neil. Let the knife-wielding maniac at you with his weapon of choice. Don’t blame me when you lose an ear,” he half-shouts, hysterical.He’s mostly joking.





	disparity

**Author's Note:**

> you don't really need to read the first one to understand this but go ahead if you'd like. let me know what you think!

Andrew’s the only one Neil will let near him wielding scissors. Nicky finds this exasperating in its blatant irony, but he’s long since abandoned any attempts to understand them.

“Sure, Neil. Let the knife-wielding maniac at you with his weapon of choice. Don’t blame me when you lose an ear,” he half-shouts, hysterical. 

He’s mostly joking.

Andrew’s returning stare is bored and unamused, but Nicky gets the message loud and clear: Fuck off. 

He’s seen it every day since he met Andrew, took him in; two identical faces illuminated with twin, funereal expressions. 

He’d felt like the disillusioned parent of teens. To think he’d never appreciated Aaron’s cute phase - where had his sweet, lovely children gone? Replaced by these rotten monsters with attitudes, and ungratefulness, and - and marijuana.

Pills, in Aaron’s case. Andrew barricaded his newfound brother in a crusty-tiled bathroom; fixed ‘the problem’ with clean efficiency and emotional detachment. 

Aaron screamed, and he threatened, and he hurled insults, exhausting his verbal arsenal as thoroughly and articulately as he was capable, and then he screamed some more,

and then he cried. His chest rattled with thick, ugly sobs; he choked on strings of mucus and hacked it up onto the floor. He vomited and shook uncontrollably and spewed bile and sick.

And then he begged, softly, his voice gone hoarse. Desperate pleas and garbled, senseless murmurs. He called for his mother. 

Nicky sat silent and somber, back pressed rigid against the paint-chipped wood of the door. And he sobbed too. He paced grooves in the floor, lost his appetite; felt more useless and more unequipped for this pseudo-parenthood than he’d ever thought possible. 

Andrew’s face did not once quiver. Flat and mechanical and unaffected he stood his vigil with eyes gone hard. 

He’d been through some shit. Wouldn’t say what. Wouldn’t let Nicky near him, but come to think of it, neither would Aaron, and honestly?

Nicky hadn’t even known about the drugs. So self-pitying and tender was he, ignored by Twins A and B, missing his boyfriend and licking his wounds; poor Nicky unattended to and bleeding with his heart on his sleeve, rejected. 

There was no excuse. Andrew still noticed. Andrew still noticed, and treated it with the brisk, dutiful attention necessary in the wrapping of a clean-cut wound; swabbed with antiseptic and freshly bandaged with keen regularity until healed—

First he’d stocked up on canned goods. 

“Have you not noticed?” His voice was bland and his eyes half-closed; he was bored, completing a chore still half in autopilot.

“Noticed what? We… ran out of Campbell Soup? Diced pears?” Nicky squinted at the labels, voice lilting with incredulity. Andrew had proved, in their week as tentative housemates, to be entirely inscrutable. 

(Nicky thought he’d grown to understand him. Now, seeing him with Neil, he’s no longer quite as sure.)

This was before the meds. Before Eden’s Twilight, and bartending, and the Palmetto State Exy team. Andrew dropped his grocery bags on the counter and busied himself about the kitchen, opening cabinets and rummaging through drawers. 

“Aaron’s an addict.” He said evenly. “I am going to fix him, and you won’t get in my way.” 

It was less a suggestion than it was a thinly-veiled threat, realized Good and Great Guardian Nicholas Hemmick.

Sixteen years old, the both of them. 

Four years more weary and thoroughly exhausted, Nicky leans against the dingy counter and watches. They’re in the cramped, dimly-lit kitchen of their dorm. Linoleum floor, beer-stocked fridge. Neil sits on a folding chair from Kevin’s room, borrowed - without due permission, of course - and crosses his legs nervously, hands on his knees and eyes darting rapidly about the room.

“Shut up, Nicky.” He bites out. The ear comment struck a nerve, Nicky thinks.

He’s grown used to the Brand New Neil, lax and approachable and mouthy still, always a junkie - if not more aware of his own limits - and never afraid to toe the line with Kevin’s patience. This regression is sudden and unnerving; he attributes it to the glint of scissors on the counter and residual memories of his fun-filled family reunion just months ago. Neil’s scars are still healing and Nicky’s heart hurts. 

He holds up his palms unthreateningly, averts his gaze. “Sorry, Neil. Don’t mind me. Go on, enjoy your haircut. I’m not even here.”

Andrew spreads Kevin’s favorite shower towel over Neil’s chest; a makeshift barber’s cape. He tucks the edges with careful precision: beneath Neil’s collar, around the narrow span of his shoulders. 

It isn’t the detached way he handled Aaron. Andrew’s grown too, slowly but surely; Nicky sees his muted affection and wonders, how, how could he have missed it? 

Neil turns to look at Andrew as he runs the sink behind him, foot tapping now, haphazard rhythms and staccato beats made louder still by the relative silence of the dorm. The television drones on in the den, abandoned by Kevin in favor of practice.

The faucet shuts promptly off. Andrew’s index finger digs into the apple of Neil’s cheek, repositioning and grounding him in one fell swoop. 

“Be still.” 

More words than he’s said to Nicky all week. He looks on in relative interest as Andrew parts Neil’s hair, combs it down in front of his eyes and over his ears. His brisk manner is conciliatory, if not entirely placating, and Neil’s breathing slows and evens out. 

Andrew holds Neil’s bangs between his fingers and makes the first cut. 

It is nothing if not surreal. This Andrew: sheath-hiding bands pulled firmly in place, armed beyond even paranoia’s staunch, overt necessitation—handling blades with care and precision. 

Andrew is small, compact; he is boxily built and impossibly swift. 

And he fights fucking dirty. 

Nicky’s seen him aim knives with vigor and purpose; deft and threatening and quietly violent. Sometimes he's laughing, though he hasn’t heard that since before Easthaven—a harsh, discordant noise he does not miss.

Here, Andrew carefully cuts a halo round Neil’s head—shortening here, trimming there. Nicky looks on in wonderment. Hair falls to tile in fine wet clumps.


End file.
